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Agriculture

From butter churns to diesel tractors, the Museum's agricultural artifacts trace the story of Americans who work the land. Agricultural tools and machinery in the collections range from a John Deere plow of the 1830s to 20th-century cultivators and harvesters. The Museum's holdings also include overalls, aprons, and sunbonnets; farm photographs; milk cans and food jars; handmade horse collars; and some 200 oral histories of farm men and women in the South. Prints in the collections show hundreds of scenes of rural life. The politics of agriculture are part of the story, too, told in materials related to farm workers' unions and a group of artifacts donated by the family of the labor leader Cesar Chavez.

Primarily trade catalogs, printed advertisements, correspondence on letterhead stationery, price lists, bills, receipts, addresses, envelopes, advertising cards, reports, manuals, memorandum books, fair tickets, lithographs, photographs, almanacs, etc., from manufacturers and distributors of farming machinery and implements. Many agricultural tools and products are represented. Also includes material from agricultural societies, such as the American Agricultural Association and the Livestock Society of America, and from experiment stations, along with general publications and periodicals.

Subseries 1 contains items relating to agricultural and mining opportunities in Colorado, as well as publications on health resorts in Colorado Springs. The Tourism subseries contains guidebooks, brochures and souvenirs of railroad tourism.

A short Handled hoe, 1936 hoe. Original owner Librado Hernandez Chavez, (father of Ceser Estrada Chavez). The hoe has a metal blade welded to a metal neck and a wooden handle. The two are attached by a slot screw. The top edge of the blade is similar to the two curves at the top of a valentine hear. Blade recently sharpened.

The short-handled hoe brings back memories of back-breaking labor for generations of Mexican and Mexican American migrant workers who sustained California's booming agricultural economy. Since the late 1800s, its expansive fields of produce have relied on a cheap, mobile, and temporary workforce. The short-handled hoe required workers to bend painfully close to the ground to weed and thin crops. The state abolished the short-handled hoe in 1975, ruling it an occupational hazard after a seven-year legal battle. During this period of political mobilization, the predicament of the migrant farm worker became emblematic of the limited opportunities and the cycle of poverty that trapped many Mexican Americans. In 1966, when Mexican and Filipino American farm workers were brought together under the banner of the United Farm Workers of America, the struggle for labor rights was understood by its supporters as part of the much larger civil rights movement. It was not just important for Mexican Americans but also other low-paid workers. The hoe pictured here belonged to Librado Hernandez Chavez, father of civil rights leader and farm worker organizer, Cesar Estrada Chavez.

Primarily illustrated catalogs, invoices and receipts, price lists, advertisements, advertising cards, almanacs, business cards, circulars, correspondence, lithographs, seed packages, pamphlets and guides from companies involved in the seed industry and trade, including seed growers, merchants, nurseries, auctioneers, importers and exporters. Includes a number of images, as well as monographs from the Luther Burbank Society, which discuss what the Society termed the "improvement of the human plant."

Correspondence, extensive agricultural notes, photographs, maps, and a scrapbook from Adlard's time as a student at Lingnan University, China. His photographs, commentary, and notes on rural life in both China and the Philippines are detailed and insightful. Includes articles written by Adlard that were inspired by his time in the Orient, on Philippine cocoanut production, Chinese village life, the farmers of China, soybeans as food and pre-war China. Also includes Adlard's later articles for various publications and his correspondence with Julia Needham of the Troy-Bilt Owner News about Adlard's work with drip system irrigation and design as well as his use of Chinese farming practices in his own home garden. Includes some brief biographical information on Adlard, related gardening and agricultural pamphlets and two copies of the Garden Way Inc. publication, "Gardening Beyond the Plow." This collection is valuable in its view of rural China and the Philippines just prior to World War II and the domination of East Asia by Japan.

Cite as

Richard Adlard Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History